Ability Sequence

Introduction

Hello I'm SwelteringMuffin and I welcome you to my Soraka guide. In my guide I will go through the most important things you need to know about Soraka to make you an overall better player at League of Legends and Soraka, while trying to keep it as short as possible. Have any questions after reading my guide? Feel free to leave a comment in thediscussion section. I recently started streaming aswell (2018, January) you can find me on https://www.twitch.tv/swelteringmuffin

Why should I play Soraka?
Soraka is the type of support champion that brings amazing heals and prevents the enemy team to unleash all their skills on your team with her great crowd control skill. You're the champion that keeps your team sustained and able to keep on fighting to siege turrets and secure objectives. So if you like healing your team, have sustained teamfights and preventing your team from dying then Soraka is the champion made for you.

The key to success
Teamfights aren't always coordinated therefore you'll have to keep your team together. It's your job to be healing your allies frequently, healing the right ally at the right time and hitting your Starcall now and then. Eventually you're outsustaining the enemies and you're ready to secure objectives. To play Soraka like a god it's definitely important to know your positioning, but most importantly have fun playing Soraka and outhealing your enemies dps!

Check out the chapters, Items for reasonings and Tips & Tricks for useful information on Soraka gameplay.

Pros / Cons

Every champion has it's strengths and weaknesses, Soraka's biggest weakness is her squishyness. The key to deal with her squishyness is to master your positioning. In teamfights this would mean your tanks are in the front, your damage dealers are right behind your tank and you're in the back untouched.

Starcall gives you high sustain, it's a great catch up or getaway tool while dealing tons of damage and gaining alot of hp back. With Soraka you don't even have to be near the battle to save someone due to her global ult Wish. The amount of hp you sacrifice with Astral Infusion is so little compared to how much your teammates gain. Soraka has great crowd control for teamfights and objectives, use Equinox to cut great amount of damages in teamfights by placing it underneath the highest threat/as many enemies as possible, you can also use it to zone away enemies from your objective. Salvation gets you quicker to lower hp allies to keep them healthy.

Sometimes it's even beneficial to have a squishy target on your team as it can bait your enemies to go for you. When you've mastered your positioning this can go horribly wrong for the enemy team throwing themselves into a death pit as your team murders the diver.

Runes

Soraka is a champion based on healing other allies, therefore you opt for the keystone mastery Summon Aery.

We choose Summon Aery because it further helps your protect your allies with the shield it provides aswell as poke enemies harder when you damage them.

We choose The Ultimate Hat because you will further decrease your cooldown on your ult giving more opportunities for cross map plays.

We choose Celerity because the movement speed will help you with your positioning in teamfights, you also get some AP based on bonus movement speed which is pretty useful.

We choose Waterwalking because the movement speed will help you when warding in/around the river, plus you'll get some scaling AP which is always nice.

The remaining points are put in the Resolve tree, this will grant you alot more healing and safety.

We choose Unflinching because this will give you more safety when your summoner spells are down by granting you tenacity and slow resistance, even more so after directly using a summoner spell.

We choose Revitalize because your heals/shields will be stronger, even more so when allies are below 40% hp.

Summoner Spells

Summoner Spells are spells that influence the pace of the game by alot. Burning someone's Summoner Spells can set your team up for a big play in the next couple of minutes. It is important to note that you as a team should keep track of which Summoner Spells are being used by the enemies during fights. You can tell your team by opening the scoreboard (usually tab) then clicking on the enemies champions Summoner Spells that have been used. Even better is if you time when they'll be back up again.

So what Summoner Spells do I pick?
Get Exhaust and Flash, no discussion. Both can get you out of sticky situations but can also get your allies to kill the exhausted person really easy as it reduces their movement speed and damage dealt for a good 2.5 seconds.

Reducing cooldowns of Summoner Spells
By buying Ionian Boots of Lucidity you will reduce the cooldown of your Summoner Spells by 10%. Now think of all the possibilities you have when your Summoner Spells are slightly earlier up than your enemies Summoner Spells, your options are limitless because you can use it in so many ways, both defensive and offensive.

Cooldowns of Summoner Spells with 10% reduction

Before Flash has a cooldown of 300secs. Exhaust has a cooldown of 210secs.

You start the game with Spellthief's Edge and Faerie Charm these are both used for your first item Eye of the Watchers. Spellthief's Edgeis a gold generating item that gives you some AP and MP regen early on which is useful since all of Soraka's abilities scale off AP. The MP regen from Faerie Charmmakes you not have to waste your gold on potions. You'll also have more MP to play with, for Soraka it's totally great because her MP converts to HP when hitting Starcall.

The Warding Totem is self explanatory, you get it to place wards in bushes and prevent any possible early ganks if your lane is pushed.

*Swap to Oracle Alteration at lv 9, this is great for denying vision and preventing tp flanks. Keep track of the cooldown so you can use it as soon as it's available, whilst active try to cover as much map as possible.

We opt for these two items because Soraka scales very well with cooldown reduction. These items are cheap but very effective. They provide great MP regen and HP sustain due to the AP, early game and even better mid to late game. On top of that your gold generation will be better, you reduce your Summoner Spells cooldown for more epic plays and your movement speed will help your positioning by alot, especially with the burst of movement speed you get when you proc Tribute after you completed the quest. Ofcourse you'll also have four wards to get vision of dark places. Having knowledge of where enemies hide gives you safety and the possibility of surprising the enemy champion with your team.

Once again, cooldown reduction and AP goes very well with Soraka. Both items are cheap and very effective on Soraka. They provide extra buffs when healing which make your heals pretty epic. You also get some MR and MP regen which is nice and useful.

In addition you get some great passives:

You get some heal and shield power.

You get more movement speed.

When healing, allies get an attack speed buff, some extra magic poke damage and more healing when auto attacking.

Blood Charges makes you heal alot more, they are gained by damaging enemies and can be stored.

The amount of AP these two items give is great. Mid and late game it's so amazing, many enemies don't expect such OP heals by building full AP with the right cooldown reduction items. The AP build makes you get your HP back real quick.

The first four items
Cooldown reduction is a very important stat on many champions, some champions need it more than others. Soraka is a champion that scales very good with cooldown reduction because it will reduce your global ult Wish and you can spam Astral Infusion super fast during teamfights.

Situational items
Replacing Athene's Unholy Grail by Mikael's Crucible when against heavy cc comps. Generally speaking Mikael's Crucible will provide more healing if you're new to Soraka and you have a poor accuracy with Q and E. However if you're good at landing your Q's and E's Athene's Unholy Grail will have much more powerful heals and prevent allies from dying to extreme bursts without having to use your R immediately. Stacking and consuming Blood Charges makes you also use less W's to top off your allies thus keeping yourself at a decent amount of HP. Mikael's Crucible has similar purposes as Athene's Unholy Grail which is maxing out your cdr aswell as making your heals strong. However one big difference is the active: instantly removing crowd control, to keep yourself and allies extra safe. Aside from the active you further increase your sustain based on your base MP regen which makes it a perfect fit in combination with Eye of the Watchers and Ardent Censer.

After the first four items you mainly focus on AP. As mentioned before all of Soraka's abilities purely scale off AP therefore we opt for the highest AP items per item slot. This would be Rabadon's Deathcap and Seraph's Embrace due to the passives. Both of the items will result in OP heals, OP damage from Starcalland getting HP back real quick. Aside from that you will also get a shield active that can save you if you get jumped on in teamfights.

Tips & Tricks

Wish is a global ult. When it's safe look around the map or at the health bars of your allies icons. Use your ult in situations where you can save allies from dying or assist them to turn the fight around and get them a kill. Don't just use your ult if someone is low, make sure there is a chance your allies may get away or atleast finish an important target before dying.

Your ult heals 50% extra when allies are under 40% HP, wait till your allies are below 40% but make sure they don't get bursted, so react fast. Sometimes you can bait the enemy team by using your ult when your ally is around 5-25% HP rather than 25-39%, make sure you don't bait yourself by reacting too slow.

Rejuvenation lasts for 4secs, while Rejuvenation is active Soraka gets healed every half a second and gets a 10% bonus movement speed when not moving towards enemy champions, meaning the speed buff only applies when you're disengaging.

Healing allies with Astral Infusionwhile Rejuvenation is active will copy it's effects to your allies. You can copy the effects to multiple allies with one Starcall hit.

Starcallgives sight of the area before it lands, use it to check bushes/dragon/baron if the enemy team is missing.

Top up your allies HP to around 95-99% with Astral Infusion, don't waste your own HP by overhealing your allies (more than 100%).

Know how much you heal your allies, don't get too low on HP yourself, since you're already squishy you may get focused and die.

Be careful with how much you heal your tank as they have alot of HP, if the enemy team has atleast three magic damage champions suggest Spirit Visage to your tank/bruisers, this will increase your healing on them by alot!

At low HP (20-50%) you may want to stay at longer range and try to hit your Starcall, don't recall if you have MP left. Once you get better on Soraka you'll notice you won't always have to leave the lane at 5-10% HP, unless your adc is recalling aswell, due to your high sustain from MP/HP regen items and Starcall.

If you're confident that you're safe, top up your allies health before recalling.

Use Equinoxto silence enemies and root/immobilize them if they stay too long in it. Also useful when doing objectives such as drake to zone enemies away/keep them at distance.

Ask your jungler to duo drake at lv 3. Make sure that: your adc plays safe when you leave the lane, your jungler and own HP is 90% or higher, you have a decent amount of MP and have two points into Starcalland one into Astral Infusion. Use your Warding Totem before starting and go to the drake from the top side or blue buff side so it's not obvious for the enemy team where you went. Once started spam your Starcall onto the drake and spam your Astral Infusion on your jungler (don't overheal), throw in some auto attacks while you're not healing and your Starcall is on cooldown. Lastly stand safe and only let your jungler tank.

Vision & General Gameplay

Before I start talking about where you should exactly place your wards as a support or any role for that matter, I want to give some insight about certain topics that alot of players forget or are not aware of.

I will go through the following topics:

Vision

Map awareness

Team compositions

Minimap

Pings

Wards, functions and efficient use

General

What is vision and why do we want it?Vision is information of the map that your enemy team may not know about, therefore you're talking about advantages. Having vision around objectives means you have more control over the situation.

Vision examples

Your team has a ward placed in the river:

This means you or your allies can spot enemy champions. Most likely the enemy jungler but also the rest of the enemy team, since anyone may roam to other lanes at almost any point.

Your team has a ward placed between the blue buff and gromp of the enemy jungle:

Not only can you spot the enemy jungler/rest of the enemy team, but you also have vision of the enemies jungle camps. Meaning you may figure out the enemy jungler's route or where they have been and thus knowing where the enemy jungler approximately is.

Once vision is obtained you need to make use of these advantages, the placed wards will help you with your map awareness.

What is map awareness and why do we want it?
Map awareness is nothing more than being aware of your surroundings:

Knowing in what situation you are

Realizing how far up in lane you are

In what kind of dangers you may be getting

What you're risking

When you're aware of your surroundings enemy ganks/roams will be less effective because retreating in time will result into less deaths. Having map awareness will not only reduce your amount of deaths but it will also help you make the right decision.

Map awareness example

When there's a 'base race' or a race where both teams are trading objectives and you're aware that the enemy team has the upper hand the right call could be to recall and mitigate the damages or a potential loss.

Team compositions
It's important to note that you should be aware of what the enemies team composition is, aswell as your own team composition. This means you should know or have a general idea what the enemies are capable of doing and what your team is capable of doing.

Team composition examples

Knowing your enemies team composition:

You should know that champions like Nidalee and Kindred have wall hops. If the enemy jungler plays a champion with a wall hop it means your wards that give you protection from being ganked may get bypassed and give you false hope of being safe.

You should not only be aware of the enemy jungler because roams, spells and champion skills that have teleports may get you in trouble too.

Knowing your team composition:

You should be aware what champions your allies are playing. You don't want to reactively flash away if your jungler suddenly pops out of nowhere scaring the hell out of you.

You should know what your allies are capable of to estimate the amount of power your team has and of the possible combo's/follow ups.

Minimap
Now that you know what map awareness is, why we want to be aware of our surroundings and the team compositions, you'll understand that the minimap is an important tool and by looking frequently at it you'll become a better player.

Minimap example

I never look at the minimap, is this a disadvantage for me?

Yes, this is definitely a big disadvantage. You can train yourself by looking more frequently at the minimap. Try looking at it atleast once every 30 seconds. When you get used to it and you don't find it too distracting anymore you start lowering it for yourself bit by bit, at a point where you're atleast checking your minimap once every 5-10 seconds.

Pings
When you check your minimap you must immediately think about certain things and inform your allies in an efficient way. Use your ping functions on the minimap, when enemies are missing for about 5-10 seconds, to inform allies quick and safely.

Ping options

In options, when you press esc, hotkeys, communication you'll find Alert Ping and Retreat Ping. When you press your hotkey for either Alert or Retreat, aim it at the location on the minimap, hold your mousebutton on the minimap, you may drag it around and release it for more ping options such as On My Way, Missing Enemy, Danger, Assist Me.

Ping example

Your top laner has placed a ward in the top river, a few moments later the enemy jungler goes through the top river and you notice this.

You should ping Danger at the location where you spot the enemy jungler so that the rest of your team notices this too.

Once you see the enemy jungler being in the top river, you know that you're most likely not going to be ganked by the enemy jungler for a little while.

Using pings frequently to communicate with your allies is a great, fast, efficient and safe way to get on the same page with them. Now let's talk more about wards, how you should use them and ward efficiently.

Wards, functions and efficient use
First of all, let's look at the possible options to get vision:

Stealth wards have a limited use, each player can have a maximum of three stealth wards placed on the map at a time. Therefore you should use them wisely and efficiently.

Don't place two wards on the same location or near each other, try to spread them around.

Place them in bushes so that if an enemy goes in a bush you or your team can still attack them.

When being pushed in, place wards for protection.

Try to get some deep vision, when pushing waves, around the objectives (turrets/drakes/dragon/baron) that you're going for without risking to die.

When alot of enemy turrets are destroyed you can place a ward in lane (usually in mid lane) depending on the situation because the lanes will be very long. The ward is also great for tp flanks.

Control wards are wards that give vision but are visible to enemies if they spot them. They last forever until destroyed by the enemies, they reveal and disable enemy wards and reveal camouflaged enemy champions. You can only have one of these on the map per champion.

They aren't free so try to protect them by attacking the enemy.

They are used to deny vision and clear enemy wards, thus giving you control over that part of the map.

The best way to use them is to place them in bushes where they will last long and give good information.

Farsight Alteration are wards that give vision but are visible to enemies if they spot them.

Keep track of the cooldown and spam these in any bush for deep vision.

Sometimes you want to place them in bushes of your own jungle, they are more likely to last longer and you can spot enemies invading your jungle.

Rift Scuttler

Take these with your allies whenever you can, to prepare a possible drake/dragon or baron.

This vision cannot be removed, not even with control wards, sweeping lens or oracle alteration. Enemies that start drake/dragon or baron will be spotted unless they enter the pit from the back.

Besides vision it also gives a nice movement speed buff that may help you win teamfights if the objective is contested.

General
The following two things are important to note:

If there are three enemies in the top lane it means there can only be two enemies on the rest of the map. Therefore you're more safe to make plays in other lanes, play more aggressive, try to push out waves, get a turret and take jungle camps whilst retreating if you're in the position to do so. Otherwise your team should rotate to other lanes to save turrets in the top lane.

When you ward be careful, it is not worth dying to place a ward. It is also not worth going halfway across the map to place a control ward, you lose too much time running around and you'll fall behind on xp/levels/gold. However it is worth if your team is about to make plays on that side of the map.

Dealing with the living jungle:

Blast cones are used to hop over walls, when you're in the enemy jungle destroy these to deny a possible advantage.

Scryer's blooms are used to scout enemies and enemy wards, note that when enemies get spotted they'll get particles around them meaning they know someone destroyed it.

Honeyfruits are used to top off your HP and MP. Use them when you need them. Denying them from enemies will deny them from your allies too, only deny from enemies when they are nearby with low HP and wanting it.

Placing control wards when on blue side:
*The darker coloured square is optional.

Placing control wards when on red side:
*The darker coloured square is optional.

About SwelteringMuffin

General
This is my first ever guide, if it helped you in any way make sure to up vote the guide. If you have any questions/feedback feel free to comment in the discussion section.

I play on the NA server with the username SwelteringMuffin (previously X_Ploxinator_X).

Main role
I mainly play support. Beside the fact that it's the fastest to queue with, it's also a really easy role. For example you don't really have to worry about last hitting minions. It is an easy role, but to be great at it you have to do alot for the team. I also like to play unusual support champions, because people don't know what to expect and how to react when you change a champions standard role/lane/build. The element of surprise can be beneficial for your team and unfavorable for the enemy team.

Other rolesI have also played alot of jungle. It gives a good knowledge on when to exactly gank and how to bait your enemies perfectly into death as a laner. Since I play alot of squishy supports I've learnt how to bait enemies very well, provoking them or sometimes showing that champion mastery is enough to get them greedy.

Because of how much I've played as a support I have a good understanding on how the bottom lane and synergy between AD and support works. This is one of the reasons I like to play AD aswell.

Support throughout the years
Aside of all that, maining support has taught me how to efficiently ward, bringing the most vision to your team. This is something that I've transferred to other roles aswell, warding efficiently, because vision is not only the supports job, it's a team job. Once you get the hang of warding efficiently you will automatically work on your map awareness. Having map awareness made me know very well how to rotate around the map and when to take turrets, drakes, dragons or barons.